Stephano and Trinculo — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Stephano and Trinculo
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents Stephano and Trinculo, and how the character develops across the text: the drunken butler and the jester whose plot with Caliban is a comic copy of the lords' usurpations.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'What have we here? a man or a fish?', 'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows', 'they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian', 'I'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject', 'Kiss the book', 'A most poor credulous monster!', 'Why, thou deboshed fish, thou', 'This will prove a brave kingdom to me', 'Monster, I will kill this man', 'his daughter and I will be king and queen', 'He that dies pays all debts', 'I am not Stephano, but a cramp'.
Prose, drunken songs and slapstick, and their plot as a comic copy of the lords' plots against rulers.
Context: the clowns of Italian commedia dell'arte, and Trinculo's idea of showing Caliban for money in England.
Edexcel's Shakespeare question has two parts: part (a) on the printed extract marks only language, form and structure (AO2), so context earns nothing there; part (b) on the play elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1, 15 marks) and context (AO3, 5 marks), not language analysis. Say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
